'One Child Nation' Illuminates One Horror, Reveals Another
Starting as a personal look at the damages wrought by decades of China's one-child policy, One Child Nation exposes a deeper, baser level of national corruption.
06 Aug 2019
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Poetry and Economics in 'Everything is Broken Up and Dances'
A passionate first-hand account from two Italian writers depicts the ravages of neoliberal capitalism in poignant, poetic prose.
05 Mar 2018
'Empire of Glass' Reflects on Outsider Status
Solomine chooses not to delve too deeply into Chinese complexity, even as naturally she strives to express the foreignness of the encounter she has had in fact and fiction.
03 Nov 2017
Dancing the Tango Through Mao's Cultural Revolution With Argentinian Pancho and His Orchestra
On Shanghai dance halls of the late '30s and a vinyl tango artifact that survived Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
14 Aug 2017
Life in the Interzone in Old Shanghai
The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai and Flowers of Shanghai capture a William S. Borroughs-like Interzone in Old Shanghai.
07 Jun 2017
'Tharlo' Is a Slow-moving Allegory About Innocence lost
Pema Tseden's Tharlo presents an allegory of Tibet and China in the guise of a film noir story set in Thailand
14 Mar 2017
Bingham Prize Winner Jack Livings on Imagining China
Award-winning fiction writer Jack Livings discusses his new book, The Dog, and the importance of writing with moral purpose.
02 Sep 2015
Ai Weiwei on Truth, Beauty and Futility
According to What?, a retrospective of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei currently on display at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
10 Jun 2014
Shanren: Left Foot Dance of the Yi and Other Chinese Folk-Rock Anthems
Left Foot is a varied album but not a restless one.
27 Jan 2014
Anarchy in the PRC! 'Beijing Punk'
Tattoos, ragged skinny jeans, and Ramones t-shirts don’t comprise a sartorial image typical of the People’s Republic of China, but any politically repressive society is bound to breed misfits, and Shaun Jefford’s documentary illuminates this previously ignored niche of contemporary life in the Chinese capital.
07 Jan 2013
How China Grabbed Hold of the World In Order to Survive and Compete: 'Restless Empire'
From the peak of the Qing Dynasty to today, China has moved far and fast. Here's a chance to catch up.
05 Dec 2012
Waves of Grain: How World War II Created Our World
World War II changed the way we eat, live and work on such a fundamental scale that to those in the West it seems like there has never been anything other than the globalized world it created.
01 Oct 2012
Standing at the Edge of a Cliff: China in Two Books
Like the scene in romantic movies where two lovers see each other from across a crowded room and begin running towards one another, culturally the US seems to be rushing towards China as fast as China is rushing towards the US.
05 Aug 2012
History as a Witness to Murder: 'Midnight in Peking'
Peking, on the edge of World War II, couldn't have been more fraught with tension. The brutal murder of a young Englishwoman was the proverbial match struck to this powder keg of a city.
13 May 2012
Barbarians Against Barbarians: Henry Kissinger's 'On China'
The diplomat believes he’s a skillful player, he believes he’s in control; but the game is much bigger than he is, and defines what he can and cannot do.
02 Nov 2011
'The Horse That Leaps Through Cloud' Documents China's Silk Road, Faded and Unraveling
The various threads of Eric Enno Tamm's journey converge and he offers as lucid an insight into China’s malaise as any foreigner could be expected to provide.
31 Jul 2011
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